UFC 317 pay-per-view (PPV) event is set for this Sat. night (June 28, 2025) at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, headlined by the vacant 155-pound title fight pitting former featherweight kingpin, Ilia Topuria, opposite ex-lightweight titleholder, Charles Oliveira. In UFC 317’s flyweight championship co-main event, Alexandre Pantoja defends his 125-pound strap against longtime contender, Kai Kara-France.
Referee Marc Goddard will be the third man inside the cage for the Topuria vs. Oliveira main event, with judges Derek Cleary, Sal D’Amato and Chris Lee scoring the action from cageside. Prior to that, referee Herb Dean will complement judges Mike Bell, Ben Cartilage and Ron McCarthy for the Pantoja vs. Kara-France scrap.
That’s according to a report from MMA Fighting.
“You can never count him out because he’s a dangerous guy,” Topuria told Ariel Helwani about facing Oliveira. “He has the most finishes in the UFC’s history. But I have faced those kind of situations many, many times, with [Alexander Volkanovski], with Max Holloway. No one could beat them. No one could knock them out. And they always had this thing in their mind, like, ‘Oh, I faced this guy and this one and that. No one could knock me out.’ You never faced me. You never faced someone that skillful like me.”
“This is what I’ve been saying for a long time,” Topuria continued. “The skill development I’m bringing to this sport, they’ve never felt it, they never saw it. So this is what’s going to happen with Charles. He thinks that he has some opportunities, but the reality is that he [does] not. The only thing he has to do is show up, and I’ll do the rest.”
For the rest of the UFC 317 fight card and PPV lineup click here.
